PRESSED PAINTS

On a wooden board, Fabio draws the image he wants to paint. Then he carefully drips acrylic paint directly from the tube, precisely calculating the distribution of color or scale of grays, the amount of paint and the exact points where it should accumulate.

Once this is done, he places a pane of thick glass on top that’s the same size as the board. Chance (keenly calculated) intervenes and the points of accumulated paint spread out, resulting in an unmistakably pixilated facture. Moreover, as if it were a supplementary performance imitating the traditional process of trampling grapes to obtain the juice for wine, he executes a kind of ritual dance with meticulous precision on the glass to ensure that the thick coats of paint beneath spread out in a uniform manner. The result: a perfect communion of surface, paint and glass, that become indivisibly one with the final painted image which we contemplate, fixed to the glass.